Chris Weidner: Surgery and 'recovery' offer a Thanksgiving lesson

Boulder and Green Mountain from the summit of Bear Peak in early September. The author recommends against this 'walk' just four days after surgery.
(Chris Weidner)

Bad genes are to blame for the hernia and subsequent surgery I faced at the end of August.

It was a routine procedure that I'd already endured once before, as a teenager. But prime climbing season was just around the corner, and this time fitness became my obsession.

The surgeon advised me to limit exercise to walking for the first two weeks, then ease back into normal activity the following week. I obviously couldn't plan on getting stronger, but I could take walking to a new level.

Two days post-op, loaded with painkillers, I stumbled about 200 yards at a centenarian's pace. It was all I could muster. The next day I felt more alive, so I walked up and down Mount Sanitas. With some energy remaining, I also walked about six miles on the Boulder Creek Path.

On day four I walked up Bear Peak. Day five was Green Mountain, and day six was a 10-mile round-trip "walk" up North and South Arapaho Peaks. A little fourth-class scrambling is sort like walking ... right? Afterward my abdomen ached and burned, but like any zealot I was happy. I popped two Percocet so I could sleep.

My second week of walking involved several thousand feet of fifth-class scrambling in the Flatirons. I also bouldered a few times indoors and pumped sets of weight-assisted pullups. It didn't hurt too much until a flash of pain seared my lower abdomen on a thrutchy move in the gym. I doubled over and took a few deep breaths.

"You OK, dude?" asked a fellow climber.

I wasn't sure, honestly.

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Turns out the guy just happened to work in surgery as a physician's assistant. "You're only two weeks out?" he said, incredulous. "I'd be reeeeeeally careful if I were you. I've seen what happens when hernias re-tear. It's ugly."

I climbed a little longer out of spite, if nothing else.

Week three finally arrived and I could gradually increase activity. I began by climbing four days in a row, doing my best to ignore the sharp, tearing pains near my incision that became the status quo for the next several weeks.

Then one night in bed, about a month ago, I uncurled from the fetal position. A fierce and fiery pain like I'd never experienced jolted me awake with a yelp. It felt like a flame on my skin.

"Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god!" I thought, wide-eyed and fearful. "I am so stupid!" I was certain that the internal sutures that held my guts in place had ripped. I should have listened to the doctor, and to my friends who told me to chill out, and to that guy in the gym. "IT'S UGLY " echoed through my skull as I quietly understood that I was totally screwed.

In the days leading up to my doctor's appointment, I'd never been so mad at myself. I swam in a pitiful cesspool of self-loathing, unable to see beyond my own little world where climbing was no longer possible.

But at one point something, somehow, clicked deep inside. I snapped out of my gloom and recognized that climbing itself is peripheral (as are fitness and "walking," believe it or not). What matters are the people, and the intangibles, that climbing has already given me: friends whom I consider family; a life in the outdoors; and dreams that fuel purpose and meaning.

At the doc's office a miracle happened. He said that everything seemed fine except for a tweaked nerve that was causing the pain. I hadn't done any damage. He assured me the pain would subside over time, then he shot me up with four vials of an anti-inflammatory, plus lidocaine that would numb the nerve for about 16 hours.

Sixteen pain-free hours? I immediately drove to Eldorado Canyon and climbed until dark.

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